Grant's legacy mixed blessing

The question, of course, is whether the trails he blazed are worth others traveling.

Grant, the conservative talk-radio icon, died on New Year's Eve in Hillsborough at the age of 84. He had been an on-air presence in New York City for more than four decades, and was still doing a show as late as last year before ongoing illnesses caught up with him.

Grant was controversial, yet highly popular - a public figure whose passions generated strong feelings in listeners, good and bad. Maybe you didn't agree with him, but he was hard to ignore.

When Grant was fired from WABC in the 1990s for comments regarding the late commerce secretary Ron Brown, who had been killed in a plane crash, Grant was quickly hired by WOR, which almost immediately overtook WABC in the ratings as a result.

Grant's legacy is a complicated one.

He was hardly the first right-wing firebrand to use radio to reach large audiences, but he was among the best practitioners. He could be infuriating, not just because of the stands he took but for his style of berating callers who dared to disagree with him.

Grant's idea of a radio talk show wasn't to invite genuine debate, and he is considered the father of the confrontational style that plagues our airwaves today.

Yet his fans would also applaud him as a voice of honesty amid a supposed morass of liberal media bias.

Grant's style and substance spawned many imitators; in fact, we have Grant to thank not only for the Sean Hannitys of the talk-show world, but arguably the entire Fox News network.

Fox, after all, is crafted very much in Grant's image, if not always at such a high volume - partisan and conservative, yet presented as a fair and balanced bulwark against the forces of evil.

So look around at today's political talk landscape, and remember that Bob Grant helped lead us to this place.

Then decide for yourself whether or not that's a good thing.

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Grant's legacy mixed blessing

Love him or hate him, Bob Grant deserves credit as a pioneer.

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